From one Chimney Rock to another – on Friday, September 27, 2024, after three days of rain, Hurricane Helene stalled over the Appalachian Mountains, inflicting catastrophic damage and horror for our neighbors to the south. The Chimney Rock Chronicle staff wishes to support Chimney Rock, NC and surrounding communities by sharing stories of hope to highlight God’s provision, reminding us of the needs of our fellow Americans, and providing trustworthy organi-zations to donate for the ongoing relief efforts that are so critical.
Carolina Cavalry Aids Small Farmers
Just last year, Joel Amick was working in cyber security, specifically defending the vul-nerable to fraud. Callie Farmer was working a medical corporate job and recovering from a seri-ous health condition. Two strangers, both with servant hearts, leading vastly different lives could never have imagined that a hurricane would providentially bring them together to help many through the founding of United Carolinas Cavalry. Food, water, and toiletries were immediate unmet needs in western North Carolina as Helene flood waters receded. Joel and Callie were both volunteering at the Statesville airport. Joel recalls the stunning situation, “United Cavalry did over 700 flights, deliver[ing] 385,000 pounds of survival supplies until larger organizations could come in, and that was all done by volunteer pilots donating their time and machinery and their skills to fly into airports that [were unknown] if open or not. The first couple of days were literally pilots flying around doing situation reports [such as], ‘yeah, I think I can land at this airport.’ There was no communication – no radios, no telephones. Literally, our pilots would do a low pass over the airport and they would see people starting to come out and would land and unload the water and the food to try to keep these people alive until we could get some more help.”
As Joel worked the aviation side of the efforts, Callie ran ground ops in the hangar by or-ganizing volunteers. Callie shares, “I call them my blue-collar babies ‘cause they’re all farmers from around here coming in with their trucks and their horse trailers sayin ‘load me up with what-ever you can and I’ll get in.’ So I was sitting down with a topography map and it was literally like throwing a dart at that map, because again, there was no communication with anybody. We didn’t know what roads were open, so people were going in blindly. I would give them a destination point – I was looking for churches I could find on Google maps, and then pinpoint it on a topogra-phy map, and I would get their contact information and give it to the truck driver. I would say, ‘try to make it here, be careful, use your best judgement. If you cannot get here, do not force it. Find somewhere where you see people and help them.’ I started getting feedback from all of the truck drivers – before long I had seventy different places that I was sending supplies to over and over and continuing to discover new places – it was phenomenal.” Joel adds, “You have to understand, all these supplies were coming in from the community – for the people by the people. We moved, conservatively, over three million pounds, between truck and planes, and all of that, for the very large majority, were supplies being brought in by people in the trunks of their cars. The support we had from out of state was incredible, even from out of country – Australia – people following, 4 million dollars’ worth of supplies just from Amazon went out in that first night!”
To learn more or support UCC, find them at https://UnitedCarolinasCavalry.org/, FB, IG, venmo, @UnitedCarolinasCavalry; confirmation code 7447.
(Stay tuned for part 2 of this story next month)
